The fatal touch awaits them all That turns the rocks to dust; From year to year they break and fall,-- They break, but never rust. Say if one note of happier strain This worn-out harp afford,-- One throb that trembles, not in vain,-- Their memory lent its chord. Say that when Fancy closed her wings And Passion quenched his fire, Love, Love, still echoed from the strings As from Anacreon's lyre! THE OLD TUNE THIRTY-SIXTH VARIATION 1886 THIS shred of song you bid me bring Is snatched from fancy's embers; Ah, when the lips forget to sing, The faithful heart remembers! Too swift the wings of envious Time To wait for dallying phrases, Or woven strands of labored rhyme To thread their cunning mazes. A word, a sigh, and lo, how plain Its magic breath discloses Our life's long vista through a lane Of threescore summers' roses! One language years alone can teach Its roots are young affections That feel their way to simplest speech Through silent recollections. That tongue is ours. How few the words We need to know a brother! As simple are the notes of birds, Yet well they know each other. This freezing month of ice and snow That brings our lives together Lends to our year a living glow That warms its wintry weather. So let us meet as eve draws nigh, And life matures and mellows, Till Nature whispers with a sigh, "Good-night, my dear old fellows!" THE BROKEN CIRCLE 1887 I STOOD On Sarum's treeless plain, The waste that careless Nature owns; Lone tenants of her bleak domain, Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones. Upheaved in many a billowy mound The sea-like, naked turf arose, Where wandering flocks went nibbling round The mingled graves of friends and foes. The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane, This windy desert roamed in turn; Unmoved these mighty blocks remain Whose story none that lives may learn. Erect, half buried, slant or prone, These awful listeners, blind and dumb, Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown, As wave on wave they go and come. "Who are you, giants, whence and why?" I stand and ask in blank amaze; My soul accepts their mute reply "A mystery, as are you that gaze. "A silent Orpheus wrought the charm From riven rocks their spoils to bring; A nameless Titan lent his arm To range us in our magic ring. "But Time with still and stealthy stride, That climbs and treads and levels all, That bids the loosening keystone slide, And topples down the crumbling wall,-- "Time, that unbuilds the quarried past, Leans on these wrecks that press the sod; They slant, they stoop, they fall at last, And strew the turf their priests have trod. "No more our altar's wreath of smoke Floats up with morning's fragrant dew; The fires are dead, the ring is broke, Where stood the many stand the few." My thoughts had wandered far away, Borne off on Memory's outspread wing, To where in deepening twilight lay The wrecks of friendship's broken ring.